Expedia Buying European Hotels Site Venere

Expedia is following its acquisition of a majority of India’s TravelGuru site by buying Venere.com, an Italy-based travel site listing about 29,000 hotels in Europe and the US, for an undisclosed amount.. All told, it means an extra 10,000 Europe, Middle East and Africa hotels for Expedia. Venere, which has offices in Rome, London and Paris, has been majority-owned by buyout house Advent since 2006, though the four founders retained stakes and still keep hold of those shares. Originally started by Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Expedia was later acquired and spun off by IAC (NSDQ: IACI) and is steadily building (or, rather, buying) a big footprint, also owning TripAdvisor and Hotels.com. Expedia CEO said Dara Khosrowshahi (via release): “Acquiring Venere will bring a well-known, respected European consumer brand to the Expedia portfolio.”

Also in travel today, Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT) is investing two million euros in Swoodoo, a German flights search and booking site, via its T-Online Ventures arm, and aims to integrate it with some of its own web properties, including holiday shopping site TravelScout24.